In The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, the upper class Creole society, in the 1890s, has a strict idea of the appropriate lifestyle. Their expectations of women include nothing more than being devoted wives and nurturing mothers. Chopin introduces the reader to the life of Edna Pontellier. Edna has always followed these beliefs and society’s norm, until she awakens from this reality to find her life too boring and mundane. This awakening allows her to …showed first 75 words of 1783 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1783 total…of mother also make impossible her continuing development as an autonomous individual” (Skaggs 111). Edna believes that she cannot live in both worlds. She cannot be complete in trying to be what society expects as well as being an own individual. As she decides to walk into the sea and commit suicide, the reader understands the identity problems that Edna faces: “Unable to have a full human existence, Edna chooses to have none at all” (Skaggs 111).